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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 4 Hansard (7 May) . . Page.. 1073 ..

MR MOORE (continuing):

Mr Speaker, the Assembly committee has approved this variation, but it does make a series of recommendations. Recommendation 1 states:

The committee endorses the draft Variation to the Territory Plan (No. 58): `Residential Land Use Policies'.

Recommendation 2 states:

The Standing Committee on Planning and Environment recommends that the Government review the procedures and processes used to handle draft Variations, with the aim of significantly reducing the time taken for a draft Variation to reach the Planning and Environment Committee and, subsequently, the Legislative Assembly.

Recommendation 3 states:

The Standing Committee on Planning and Environment recommends that the Government speed up the review of B1 and quickly announce the Government's response to the review, including its response to the desirability of new Guidelines - and then facilitate their speedy referral to the Standing Committee on Planning and Environment. This recommendation reflects the Committee's disappointment - and frustration - about the Government's delay in bringing forward revised proposals to the B1 Areas.

Mr Speaker, the committee also felt disappointment and frustration at the request being made to the committee by the Minister that we deal urgently with draft variation to the Territory Plan No. 58 after there had been some delay, I understand in the Minister's office, in getting it to the committee. This has become almost a habit with this department and draft variations. Finally it gets through to the committee and the committee is told, "There is a great urgency about this. Can you respond quickly?". Every time, we have responded as quickly as possible. There was some delay in our response on the draft variation that dealt with transportable homes, and with good reason. In fact, we made a statement to the Assembly explaining our reasons.

Mr Speaker, it seems to me that the issues before us in draft variation No. 58 are in themselves fairly straightforward, but I think they raise a number of other issues. In this area I have made comments additional to those made by the rest of the committee. Those additional comments are appended at the back of the report. This variation raises the issue of how we deal with dual occupancy. When this variation goes through - I imagine it will do so fairly rapidly - there will be no dual occupancies in new areas for the first five years.

It seems to me that allowing dual occupancies throughout Canberra, apart from those areas, at any time is an abrogation of planning responsibility. If we believe that it is appropriate for us to have dual occupancies in given places at given times, then let us identify exactly where and exactly when we want those and how many we want in

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